Review of The Girl from 10th Avenue

On a drunken bender after witnessing his old lover Katherine Alexander coming out of a church, just having married Colin Clive, wealthy Ian Hunter impulsively marries Bette Davis, the shopgirl who rescued him from roving reporters. Her goal is to keep him on the straight and narrow, and for a while it works-until Alexander decides she wants him back. This generic women's picture is quick and to the point but extremely illogical and resolved oh so predictably. Davis gets to repeat her dramatic rants from 1934's "Of Human Bondage" (minus the cockney accent) and the same year's "Dangerous" (which won her the first of two Oscars), but this time, she's defending herself against her husband (preparing to leave her) rather than trying to humiliate him. Clive is a more convincing drunk than Hunter (who acts too sober in a few moments of some severe drunken scenes) in his one moment of intoxication. Alison Skipworth steals every scene she is in as the tipsy former Floradora Girl with a past of her own. The film never reaches 10th Avenue, taking place mostly many blocks away on Park Avenue, although the NY Public Avenue (5th Avenue) is briefly glimpsed. The one moment of spark comes at the luncheon where Skipworth and Davis show up to make Alexander (in a rather one dimensional part) cringe.